


What You Deserve

by soberloki



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Challenge Response, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 00:37:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soberloki/pseuds/soberloki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're not exactly alike, the Weasley Twins. Severus Snape can see that easily enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Deserve

**#01 – Motion**  
They never sit still, flames at the edge of his vision and twice as hazardous: Fred can't be taught or tamed, and George… well, he's another kind of danger altogether.

**#02 – Cool**  
Grateful for the dankness of the dungeons, Snape leans his forehead against the clammy stones and pretends it isn't Oliver Wood leaving that disused classroom.

**#03 – Young**  
 _Only sixteen_ , he tells himself, and, _So much promise and you've nothing to offer, you sagging, mouldering fool._

**#04 – Last**  
Snape takes a certain pride in the fact that he's managed to bring Gryffindor down by two hundred points in a single day... _Let them explain_ that _to Minerva._

**#05 – Wrong**  
Fred Weasley follows Oliver Wood under the Quidditch stands, and Snape stalks past as if he hasn't seen them, or understood their goal.

**#06 – Gentle**  
Never one for tenderness, fearsome Professor Snape is nonetheless almost kind as he deposits the idiot Gryffindor Beater on the floor in front of Madam Pomfrey.

**#07 – One**  
For the first time ever, George is convinced he's been noticed apart from his twin, and it makes him feel hollow and dizzy, but also warm and somehow more solid.

**#08 – Thousand**  
Fireflies glitter all summer at The Burrow, and George diligently collects them in jars, Charmed to keep them alive until they can make the trip to Snape's classroom, as... a _prank,_ and certainly not Potions ingredients.

**#09 – King**  
George is nothing like Fred – that wastrel – Severus knows quality when he sees it; _this_ Weasley should be their king.

**#10 – Learn**  
Fred wants to brew glory and bottle fame, like Snape said in his first-year speech, but George suspects there are even better things the Professor knows.

**#11 – Blur**  
He doesn't know when it happened, but it's only when Minerva mentions his so-dark-it's-almost-black red waistcoat that he realizes he's begun wearing _Gryffindor_ colours.

**#12 – Wait**  
George watches Snape brew and snarl and cut his classmates down, and thinks, _I won't be too young forever._

**#13 – Change**  
Snape isn't friendly or handsome or particularly stable, but he's big and powerful and he knows things that people like George's Dad shy away from on principle - he's had ample opportunity to do harm but hasn't, and George thinks, despite Fred's snickering, that Snape could protect him from almost anything.

**#14 – Command**  
 _"Mister_ Weasley," purrs Snape, and watches the little hairs rise on the back of the boy's neck - glad, at least, of his power to intimidate.

**#15 – Hold**  
He feels like a satellite, circling, forever at the outer reaches of influence, but unable to break away.

**#16 – Need**  
After class, George races to the boys' room on the fourth floor, to the last stall, the one with the toilet that runs constantly, and mentally replays his dressing-down over and over, stroking furiously.

**#17 – Vision**  
He sees stars as he imagines how they'd look together, black hair and red, pale unmarked skin against freckled, but he can't quite form an image of the other's naked body.

**#18 – Attention**  
Four dull thuds, and the room clears - George is last student out, and as he crosses the threshold, he wishes Fred had just this once let _him_ handle the more volatile ingredients.

**#19 – Soul**  
"We're two halves of one person, you and me," Fred tells him when they're nine, and it's comforting then, but he doesn't want to be _Fred's_ other half any longer.

**#20 – Picture**  
A clipping from the _Daily Prophet_ sits on a shelf in Snape's quarters, mocking him - Weasleys, the bane of his existence.

**#21 – Fool**  
He deludes himself into thinking he's really had control, that the children respect him, but Fred's smirk next to George's timid smile says everything he needs to know.

**#22 – Mad**  
Snape tells himself to stop dreaming, for that way lies... well, more hope than he can bear.

**#23 – Child**  
George insists he _isn't_ a child, whatever his exploits at school might lead anyone to believe, and Severus wants so powerfully to agree, to bring him into the Order, that he forces himself to sneer and leave the room.

**#24 – Now**  
Snape wishes his Mum had lived longer; her advice would be invaluable to him.

**#25 – Shadow**  
The joke shop is a distant dream, but more distant still is the fantasy of Snape, dark eyes unshuttered, hair fanned across a pillow.

**#26 – Goodbye**  
Umbridge has destroyed his peace, the little bit he's ever had, in driving George away; perhaps he'll engage in a little warfare of his own.

**#27 – Hide**  
Spinner's End contains the worst sort of secrets; even the air tastes Dark.

**#28 – Fortune**  
The slip of paper is blank when he pulls it from the cookie, but its advice a moment later is sound: _A difficult choice must not be avoided out of fear._

**#29 – Safe**  
George can't imagine where this need to protect has come from - usually, Fred's ideas sound brilliant, but this time he just can't sabotage the man's hard work.

**#30 – Ghost**  
The Bloody Baron wonders idly what mischief is afoot, as one of those abominable ginger-haired boys presses his ear to the private chamber door of Slytherin's Head of House.

**#31 – Book**  
Diaries are for girls, or madmen - either way, George refuses to write out what boils in his brain every night and day, and especially during Potions classes.

**#32 – Eye**  
The constellation of freckles above George's right eye distinguishes him visually from his twin, but Severus has learned so much more that it's the least of his signs, anymore.

**#33 – Never**  
Snape knows he isn't permitted happiness, he's given up on that, but he'd like to supply a little of it, though his chances look as hopeless as ever.

**#34 – Sing**  
George knows exactly what's happened when Fawkes cries: he's been trying to save everyone, trying to arrange everything so he can have what he wants, but it's no use.

**#35 – Sudden**  
George arrives unannounced at Spinner's End and Snape expects death, but what he gets is this: "You shouldn't have left me behind like that."

**#36 – Stop**  
"We can't - your family - _I'm a wanted man_ ," Snape stammers, but George is determined, and Gryffindors may not think like Slytherins, but that doesn't mean they don't get what they want.

**#37 – Time**  
All they're allowed is three days, before the Order breaks through the wards.

**#38 – Wash**  
Light nearly drowns them both, but George has got in front of him, absorbed the bulk of the damage and Harry ends it prematurely, screaming at the flood of returned rage.

**#39 – Torn**  
Harry's hex is painful, and ugly, but it buys them the time they need, and the little bottles of memory surface in the wake of Dumbledore's passing, all while Snape brews George's cure.

**#40 – History**  
There is more of the past than there can ever be of the future, but Snape is tired of looking over his shoulder, and he's _valuable_ alive, at least to some people.

**#41 – Power**  
He's never enjoyed a proper balance of demand and concession; it startles him with its simplicity, and he can't believe he hasn't comprehended this until now.

**#42 – Bother**  
"Go to _sleep_ , idiot boy," Snape growls, though he knows he'll give whatever he's asked for, and never regret it.

**#43 – God**  
"Don't you _dare_ forget this, Snape - _I_ am your only god," George pants, under and over and all around his lover, and Severus hides his indulgent smirk.

**#44 – Wall**  
Arthur keeps his sons on the other side of the room from Snape, and glares when the distance lessens, but George's eyes glitter, and the separation no longer means anything.

**#45 – Naked**  
He has to admit to himself, finally, that he's never allowed anything or anyone to reach him so deeply before; it's disturbing and thrilling and nothing like the secret society of his former life: this exposure is entirely voluntary.

**#46 – Drive**  
There is only one thing that matters to Severus Snape, now and for the remainder of history.

**#47 – Harm**  
Dreaming, George hears the warm voice pour over him, easing and anchoring, the perfect measure of all protections, and turns his face into the pillow.

**#48 – Precious**  
So much is no longer theirs, or anyone's, that even thirty stolen seconds behind the nearest pile of debris become something to fight for.

**#49 – Hunger**  
There's no food, but that isn't what causes Snape's belly to clench and moan.

**#50 – Believe**  
There's nothing left: Snape is gone, George is only one half of a person again, and he can never tell anyone what he's come so recently to understand - _damn_ Severus and his oaths.


End file.
